You could say that actress Elizabeth Marvel has been literally moving up the ranks with her roles. As presidential candidate Heather Dunbar in Netflix’s House of Cards, she had her sights set on the Oval Office. These days, as Homeland’s President Elizabeth Keane, she’s sitting in it and running the faux U.S. on Showtime. I caught up with Marvel for my podcast, where she discussed her current role as POTUS, film life—including playing George Clooney’s onscreen wife, and how being a mom brings you straight back to reality.

Apparently, even in fiction, there’s a lot of top secret info presidents can’t reveal. Elizabeth Marvel’s discretion rivals her commander-in-chief’s character, when it comes to spilling the beans about her job. “I can’t really tell you very much,” she says. “But I can tell you that this season on Homeland is set during the exact time that we’re in at this moment as a country. (We spoke on January 17, 2017.) It’s the 72 days of the transition period. When the President-elect has been elected and before they take office. So it’s the time when they are getting their cabinet together and getting brought up to speed by the intelligence community and preparing to take office. And I’ll tell you, Elizabeth Keane is a fascinating political animal. We have never seen her likes before in the political arena. She’s a complete maverick. A very interesting, tenacious, disciplined, voracious individual. She’s a Gold Star mother. She is definitely a servant of the people…It’s a lot of fun playing this part, I’ll tell you that.”

It may all be acting, but Marvel admits that being in presidential shoes has greatly influenced her perception of the responsibilities and pressure of the real Oval Office job. “There are days…that I get glimpses, you know, creative glimpses of what it must be like, and it’s…chilling…and daunting,” notes the actress. “There’s so much coming at them all the time…I don’t think we can all really wrap our minds around it.”

Knowing that assuming a role often means that others on the set treat you as the character, I had to ask Marvel if she was enjoying a few presidential perks along the way.

“That is all well and good at work. It’s all really nice to have my pretend Secret Service people paying me respect, but the moment I walk in the door, it’s back to being ‘Mom’,” laughs Marvel. “My 10-year-old seems to have not received the memo that I’m the leader of the free world—somehow her laundry is still on the floor.”

Elizabeth Marvel is a fixture on television these days, but the actress is also well known for her theater and feature film roles. And the woman who considers herself an ordinary “working mom” is always up for those kinds of creative shifts.

It probably doesn’t hurt that she lands some fascinating roles—like playing a president, or the wife of George Clooney’s character in the feature film Burn After Reading. “OK, so I’m a working mom that also gets to kiss George Clooney,” she says with a laugh. “That’s a little bit of a perk of the job.”

Listen to Nancy’s interview with Elizabeth Marvel on iTunes and follow the podcast on Facebook.